Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to environmental equipment and, in one embodiment, to a low cost environmental compliance system method that may be utilized for monitoring a large number of often wide spread and in some cases identical environmental equipment systems, which typically are permitted to process less than 5000 gallons of wastewater per day.
Description of the Prior Art
Relatively small homeowner or business owner wastewater treatment systems allow builders and owners the ability to build in a wider range of locations while avoiding environmental damage than would otherwise be possible if reliance on larger municipal systems were required.
While environmental regulation agencies advocate keeping costs as low as practical for system owners, thereby promoting economic growth, there is also a need for the agencies to be able to oversee large numbers of small treatment systems to prevent environmental damage that can occur if the systems are not inspected at regular intervals, are overloaded, or otherwise not operating at optimal levels.
U.S. Pat. No. 8,386,303, to the present inventor, which is incorporated herein by reference, issued Feb. 26, 2013, provides a sparse data system for verifying operational compliance of a plurality of environmental systems. To reduce operational costs to a minimum, the quantity of data transmitted is minimized and the data is only transmitted at certain times. In one embodiment, if systems are compliant, then information is preferably not sent. If systems are non-compliant, then notices are sent to parties of interest at effectively the same time as the noncompliance occurs. Subsequent alarms may also be sent after detection of an operational threshold to provide notice for continued ongoing or severe noncompliance.
The treatment systems described above utilize entry of data and/or programming comprising a permitted threshold for a predetermined amount of wastewater to be treated within a predetermined period of time within the processors for each of the permitted environmental systems. As well, one embodiment of the system would require entry of data that describes the amount of fluid flow produced by a pump wherein the time of the pump operation is utilized to determine the amount of fluid processed by the system within the predetermined period of time.
This type of information is not necessarily predetermined or known to the system manufacturer and therefore cannot be provided when the systems are produced or shipped to installers, who may order larger numbers of systems for installation as needed. The system installers may not be qualified to input this information. Moreover, even identical pumps may vary significantly in the amount of fluid produced depending at least partially on installation factors such as the size and length of pipes used for installing the systems. As well, site specific information such as fluid flow by the pump will often change over time due to pump wear, different operating characteristics, and the like.
The present invention incorporates herein by reference the following other patents from the present inventor including: U.S. Pat. Nos. 7,149,701; 7,525,420; and 7,945,471.
The solutions to the above described issues and/or related problems have been long sought without success. Consequently, those skilled in the art will appreciate the present invention that addresses the above and other problems.